


The Looking Glass

by oldmountainsoul



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: A Whole Lot of Hurt and Just a Little Bit of Comfort, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, Magic Mirrors, Past Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Sort Of, angst angst angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 01:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmountainsoul/pseuds/oldmountainsoul
Summary: In which Laura finds an interesting artifact while on the nighttime Library field trip with LaFontaine, and accidentally reveals Carmilla's Tragic Backstory(c) early and far more intimately than either of them like. Bonding may or may not ensue. (It totally ensues)





	The Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> A great big thank you to my wonderful partner and fabulously talented beta, Beau!

Laura threw herself out of the way of the flaming cyclone that had formerly been the Library’s card catalog, her phone flying out of her hand and skittering uselessly across the room. She glanced back for LaFontaine, and saw them fending off their own literary assault on the other side of the fire.

The fire that was still moving towards her.  

_Crap._

She raced down the hallway, ducking around a corner and ran straight into an imposing metal door, so polished she could see her own reflection and that of the fiery vortex of index cards advancing steadily towards her. It lacked ornamentation or even _handles_ of any kind, and she would have thought it was simply a mirror if not for the telltale three-sided door frame around it.

Opening strange doors was just asking for trouble at Silas, but the impending fiery death quickly made her decision for her. Scrabbling for something, anything that would open the door as the fire loomed ever closer, Laura finally banged her fists against its smooth surface in frustration… And promptly fell through it as if it were water, stumbling onto her hands and knees onto a well-worn carpet eerily close to the color of dried blood.

The room had only a single bookshelf, weathered and grayed and splintering with age, its shelves sagging under the weight of books that looked like they predated sliced bread. The air was stale, hanging heavy with the smell of mildew as if it hadn’t seen the light of day in decades. The only furniture two chairs covered in once-white sheets thick with cobwebs and dust, and between them, a somehow pristine and polished wooden end table, on which rested an ornately carved silver-handled mirror.

“Okay,” Laura said to herself. “You’ve read enough fantasy to know that this is totally a trap, Hollis.”

She turned back, looking for the door she’d entered through, and found only a blank wall.

“Seriously?” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air giving the ceiling her fiercest glare. “Is this really necessary?”

Unsurprisingly, the ceiling, or whatever beings that may have existed above it, gave no answer.

Laura huffed out a sigh, then shouted at the ceiling once more. _“Fine,_ I’ll play the stupid, naive protagonist game. But if this blows up in my face, I’m going to have some choice words for you, you can count on that!”

Steeling herself, she went to the mirror. Obviously it was supposed to be the focal point of the room, after all. Besides being fancy, expensive, and old-fashioned, it didn’t _look_ particularly magical--it didn’t glow or glitter or set her on fire when she touched it, but that didn’t make her anymore eager to pick it up. She took a deep breath and gingerly turned it over, maybe there would be-- aha!

Beneath the mirror was yellow, crackling parchment, with a note written in faded, spidery calligraphy. Maybe it was a spell, or instructions on how to use it or get out of here. Or knowing her luck, would just be a (useless!) warning not to touch the mirror.

(She _knew_ something hinky was up with the mirror already, dammit!)

Instead, it was just a cryptic quote.

_“The most horrifying light is that in which we truly see ourselves.”_

“Sounds light and frothy,” Laura muttered, folding up the paper and pocketing it. Maybe the note would reveal more information if she wrote on it or set it on fire or read it in the light of the full moon or something.

She examined the mirror again, and nothing really seemed to jump out at her, except the fact that it didn’t have even a speck of dust on it, as if somehow it actively repelled dirt. Even her clammy hands didn’t leave fingerprints on it, somehow.

All that was left was to just… take it, she supposed. It couldn’t be a trap if she knew that while walking into it, right?

“Well, here goes nothing,” Laura said, eyes squeezed shut and shoulders tensed she quickly snatched the mirror up.

And… nothing happened.

“Okay, good to know. So far, so good: creepy mirror has yet to try and kill me,” she said, letting out a sigh of relief.

Suddenly the wall behind her shuddered and groaned, and Laura dived to the ground with an undignified squeak, the mirror cradled to her chest.

She waited for a few moments, and when bolts of lightning or barrages of arrows failed to fly over her head, she chanced looking up. The shiny, handle-less door had appeared again, just waiting for her to fall back through it.

Laura tapped the door, and its surface rippled beneath her touch. “Huh,” she mumbled. “That’s neat.”

She poked her head through the weird-shiny-ripple door into a (thankfully) inferno-less hallway, then stepped the rest of the way through. She then wrapped the mirror carefully in her jacket, tucked it into her bag, and set off down the hall to find LaFontaine.

The door then vanished behind her without a sound.

 

 

***

  


Carmilla was a vampire, the photo they’d stolen from the faculty club and the records LaFontaine had managed to scrounge up after they got separated in the Library proved it.

Of _course_ she was a vampire--as they had put it, “But we knew that since the incident with the blood in the milk-container, right?” And when Laura reviewed her own footage, particularly that of Carmilla’s panicked, _horribly_ told lie, _“I-it’s food coloring, and, and corn syrup. Just a stupid prank,”_ Laura barely resisted the urge to smack herself.

Her sociopathic roommate was an honest-to-Lestat _vampire_ , and it had been under her nose the whole time.

As for the mirror… LaFontaine had figured out a theory for that, too. “Well, it sounds like it’s about our true selves, right? Maybe it forces people to tell the truth like Wonder Woman’s lasso, or maybe it just _reveals_ truth or something like that. I know vampires supposedly don’t show up in mirrors, but Carmilla shows up in your footage anyways, so maybe that’s a myth. Anyways, maybe it’ll help with your investigation and/or interrogation, frosh.”

Well… Creepy or not, if it could help her find Betty and the others, Laura was obligated to use it, right? And after Laf left and she collapsed into bed for a hard-earned rest, she stashed it under her pillow for safekeeping. Carmilla may have been fond of stealing her pillow while she was in class, but even a vampire couldn’t take it from under her head while she was asleep without waking her, could they?

She could find a better hiding spot for it in the morning anyways. For now, she was tired enough that she figured (hoped) she might even be able to out-sleep her squicky dreams.

  


***

  


“Oh, good. You at least managed to find that wretched old thing,” a voice crooned in her ear, sweet and poisonous.

Laura’s eyes snapped open, and she was in some sort of Victorian tea room, a bright place full of so much Light, shining into every corner, consuming every speck of shadow, with no escape because _the Light was Hungry_ \--

A hand at her elbow steadied her, and the voice tutted at her. “Now now, you’re of no use to me if you get carried off by it now,” it said, and Laura looked up into the face of a beautiful girl in a white nightdress.

She had wide brown eyes and long, soft brown hair that framed her heart shaped face. She smiled at Laura, and it was as dazzling as it was dangerous--as if she were just waiting to tear out her throat, the sight of it unsettling her, making her sick to her stomach. “Fear not, sweetling. I know you will not be bewitched by her favors now, won’t you? You are far too wise, too good, to fall prey to such a thing, are you not, dear heart?”

She pulled Laura into her embrace, running her fingers through Laura’s hair in some facsimile of affection.

Laura wanted nothing more than to shove her away. But the girl held her frozen in place.

“She will wish she had drowned her own blood, the monster, when we are finished with her. We will make quite the spectacle of her, you and I. Use the mirror, little holly girl. Use the mirror and see for yourself just what manner of monster she truly is, and then you will _drive it through her heart,_ ” the girl’s voice grew more and more frenzied as she spoke, traversing the entire scale from sickly sweet to a snarl by the time she was finished.

“And that will be _the end of her,_ though she be--”

 _“‘Black as the pit and terrible as--”_ Laura bolted upright in bed, her pulse pounding in her ears as the words fell out of her mouth, unbidden, until she was cut off by a burst of black smoke appearing in the room with a soft _poof!_

“Careful now, cupcake,” Carmilla drawled, and Laura whipped around to see her sitting in the window box, flicking a lighter on and off as she watched her with those inscrutable dark eyes.

“Wha--” _What the frilly hell was that?_ **_Can_ ** _vampires even teleport?_ Laura shook her head, eyeing her roommate warily.

“How long have you been there?”

“A while…” Carmilla replied vaguely. “Long enough to hear your subconscious freaking out about your overdue Lit paper, sweetheart.”

“What?”

Whatever that nightmare was, it definitely had _not_ been about her homework. Oh for the life of a normal college student, Laura thought ruefully, where her worst nightmare would be doing failing her Literature class.

“You were quoting your Kipling reading in your sleep, creampuff.  _‘Black as the pit and terrible as a demon was Bagheera,’”_ the vampire recited, huffing out a soft, nostalgic laugh, as if at an inside joke. “It’s beautiful. I’ve always loved that.”

“Of course you would,” Laura muttered. “Of course you have a thing for the giant, terrifying black cat.”

Carmilla chuckled again, her eyes twinkling at Laura in the darkness. “You have no idea, cupcake,” she murmured.

 _What the hell was that supposed to mean?_ Laura shrugged that thought off. She had more important things to worry about, because Carmilla had apparently a) just teleported into their room, b) been watching her sleep, or c) all of the above, and Laura was not fond of any of those outcomes.

So she changed the subject.

“So… What are you doing up?” Laura asked, and then winced because her voice sounded unnatural even to herself.

 _Infuriatingly,_ Carmilla chuckled and gave her That Look again, that inscrutable, twinkling one, where her stupidly pretty dark eyes seemed to stare right through her, sizing her up and laughing at what they found.

“Looking at the stars,” she said, her voice rough with longing as she finally tore her eyes away from Laura’s. “It’s comforting, how small we are in comparison; all the lives we’ve lived, the people we’ve been… Nothing to that light,” Carmilla finished wistfully.

_How did I not know she was a vampire sooner? Who the hell studies philosophy besides a pretentious vampire?_

“You are definitely a philosophy major,” Laura replied, much to Carmilla’s amusement.

Carmilla’s eyes flicked back to her, and she frowned, the smirk immediately wiped off her face. And while Laura had been absolutely _dreaming_ about doing that since Carmilla moved in, she had the distinct feeling that this was not going to go as well as in her imagination.

“You aren’t you wearing your charm,” the vampire said roughly, her eyes hard and accusing, and Laura’s hand started inching under her pillow, searching blindly for the mirror. She very much did _not_ like Carmilla’s tone. And as creepy as the girl from her dream was, she’d been trying to warn her, right? Hell, as creepy as the _mirror_ was, while she was at it--but the girl had told her to use it, and it wasn’t like she had anything else on hand for dealing with a pissed off vampire.

“Oh that, I uh, must have just forgot to put it back on after I showered before bed, you know, didn’t want to mess up my super cool and totally-not-creepy batwing bracelet--” Laura stammered, finally getting hold of the magic mirror.

“You shouldn’t do that, it’s not going to work if you’re not wearing it--”

Suddenly, Carmilla was in her space, Laura's twitching apparently not having gone unnoticed.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, their faces just a breath apart.

“Uh, nothing--” Laura started. Okay, she _had_ the mirror now, but she still didn’t know how it worked. At least it was silver, or at least so she thought, it _looked_ like silver at least, and that was supposed to repel vampires, right? And Laura figured she could _really_ use some vampire repellent right now.

 _Well, here goes nothing._ Laura thought, and then she yanked the mirror out from under her pillow, shoving it in between her and Carmilla.

And then Carmilla growled, actually _growled,_ like some sort of wild animal, and a terrifying snarl of _“Where did you get that?”_ tore out of her throat. But then the mirror erupted with light, sending them both tumbling back onto the bed as Laura hung onto the mirror for dear life as the world went dark.  


 

***

  


**_“If they raise a hand against you, cut it off,”_ ** _Matska told you, and it was to be your first lesson after Maman pulled you from the jaws of death._

 

_This you do, and more still, the blood singing in your veins, demanding more, more, more, fury and hunger insatiable burning bright within you as you tear a man’s throat out with your teeth and rend him limb from limb with your bare hands._

 

_One by one you hunt down every man, woman, and child of House Vordenberg, every indignity they inflicted on you in death repaid tenfold in blood until the halls run red with it._

 

 **_“Monster,”_ ** _one shouts at you through a garbled snarl, before you snap his neck with just a twitch of your fingers._

 

_“Yes,” you agree, and you revel in it._

  


_***_

  


**_“Monster,”_ ** _Elle throws back in your face, as the mirror drops soundlessly from her trembling hands. “You’re a monster.”_

 

_And faced with the vision that you have shared, you cannot deny it._

 

_“Yes,” you agree. “But one who has loved you,” you add softly, and the protest rings hollow even in your own ears._

 

_“Love?” Elle scoffs. “What could a monster such as you know of such a thing? You have violated not only my trust but also--” her voice catches in her throat, but her face remains resolute, her expression hard and her eyes burning through you. "You drank my blood. You're a **monster.** "_

 

_“A monster I may be, but I would not wish the fate she has in store for you upon any poor soul, much less one as dear to me as you are,” you try again, stepping closer, reaching out to cup her cheek. You told her a great many lies, but never of this, never of this._

 

_What does a monster know of love?_

 

_Enough to save her, you hope._

 

_She recoils from you violently, her gloved hand striking your cheek. “Stay away from me!” she shouts, staggering backwards._

 

_She clenches her fists as you stare at her in shock, her shoulders shaking with silent fury. “You must believe me a great fool to think I would listen to any of your poison now, creature.”_

 

_No, you have been the only fool here, you think. The tears begin as she turns and leaves, inevitably to run right into your mother’s arms and certain doom. And you sink to your knees and openly weep._

  


_***_

  


_For your disobedience Maman entombs you in a coffin filled with blood, a slow death, but a sure one. Your mother’s latest pet fills your prison with buckets one by one, the constant sloshing and dripping maddening as you stand there silently, watching and awaiting your fate._

 

_Maman’s eyes never leave you, her expression impassive, her speeches of her great love and now disappointment in you long finished, and a flicker of a smile ghosts over her lips as you shiver under her scrutiny in the cold of the crypt._

 

_Mother’s servant finally filled the coffin to the brim, blood splashing down the sides as the boy, not yet used to his heightened senses, stumbles and exerts too much force in his pouring. Maman remains silent, casting her latest creation a stern glare and then merely pointing at you and beckoning._

 

_You clench your fists, your nails digging into your palms as you slowly approach your prison and enter the coffin carefully, aware that every drop that spills is another moment of your life lost. You wince as you lower yourself in, your body displacing the icy cold liquid and splashing several precious ounces of blood over the sides. And like a corpse, you cross your arms over your chest for your entombment before allowing yourself to sink below the surface._

 

_You didn’t have a proper burial in life after your murderer stole and desecrated your body. Fitting then, that for your second, final death, you will._

 

_Mother’s servant then carefully covers your coffin, the faint gray light of the crypt the last sight you will likely ever see, the jostling as they carry you to your final resting place for your burial the last sensation you will ever feel, and the thuds of the dirt hitting the top of your coffin the last sounds you will likely ever hear._

 

_All that remains is the endless, silent dark._

 

_You cannot move, cannot speak, cannot breathe. There is only the blood in your eyes and your nose and your ears, dripping down your throat and filling your lungs, but you don’t need to breathe, don't need to sleep._

 

_The only requirement for your continued existence is living blood, and that you have in abundance. Maman made sure of that._

 

_Your death will be sure and slow, rotting for decades, perhaps even centuries in your prison beneath the earth._

 

_You wonder what will fail you first. Will it be your mind? Or your supply?_

 

_No time exists here, in your twilight world beneath the earth, nor sight nor sound nor feeling. You can’t even count your own heartbeats, or breaths, lacking a pulse, lacking air._

 

_There is only the never-ending nothing, nothing, nothing--_

 

Laura bolted upright from the bed, finally ripping them both out of the vision, and flung the damned mirror across the room. Her hands scrabbled at her chest, her face, her arms--she’s alive, she’s here, she can move and she’s breathing and she has a pulse and everything and and and--

 _Carmilla,_ where’s Carmilla, because this was _her life_ she just experienced--

And from the looks of it, Laura noted, her heart sinking in her chest, her roommate just relived it, too.

Carmilla was curled up on the other side of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, shoulders shaking and eyes wide. She sat up slowly when she caught Laura staring at her, and forced her posture to relax, her gaze focused on her shoes.

“Well? Are you happy now, cupcake?” she snapped, unable to bear looking Laura in the eye.

“I-I didn’t know that would happen. I’m so sorry,” Laura stammered, suddenly ashamed. She really _hadn’t_ known it would do that, and while as a student of investigative journalism she was bound to cross some boundaries when it came to personal privacy, but… This felt like a complete _violation,_ a line she wished she hadn’t crossed.

Carmilla eyes flicked up at her, studying her warily. “Me neither,” she admitted quietly. “It… It didn’t go that far before.” Her face fell, and her eyes once more boring into the floor. “But I suppose there wasn’t as much to see before,” she added.

“I really didn’t know it would do that,” Laura repeated.  “I just found it in the library, and I was _pretty_ sure you were a vampire, well, that you _are_ a vampire, and I was kind of freaking out, and then you freaked me out _more,_ and it just-- I didn't know. I’m sorry. If… If I had known it was going to-- I’m just really sorry. That was--you didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”

Carmilla looked up, clearly curious, but said nothing, and the silence stretched between them as neither of them moved, seemingly afraid to break the spell.

Laura had never enjoyed awkward silences, ( _Hello,_ who did? That’s why they were called _awkward_ silences!) but after… _all of that,_ and particularly the all-consuming quiet of the coffin, she had even less tolerance for it, and well, they were both probably pretty vulnerable right now.

So she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“How did you even stand it? Like, how did you get out and how are you even _here right now,_ but also, oh my god, you’re really messed up, but like, you’re not--how are you even still standing after going through something like that? I was only there for like, what? Minutes? Maybe an hour or two, tops? And I’m already feeling like I’m losing my mind and--”

Carmilla stopped her there. “Laura,” she said simply, her expression somewhere between faint amusement and like she thought Laura was certifiably insane.

“I, um, what?” _I think that’s the first time she’s ever said my name._

A smirk teased over Carmilla’s face for just a moment at Laura’s stammering before she cleared her throat and turned away. “I’d… I’d rather not talk about it right now. Or ever.”

Laura winced. “I get that.” Afraid of falling into another awkward silence, she acted on impulse again, this time reaching out and grabbing Carmilla’s hand before she could think better of it.

“Then let’s… Maybe we could not talk about it… together?” she suggested as she gave the vampire’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

Carmilla made no efforts to hide her surprise, her eyes going wide and her jaw going slightly slack, and then she nodded slowly, gingerly intertwining her and Laura’s fingers together.

“I think I’d like that very much.”  
  
  



End file.
